


Fumbling Through the Gray

by callunavulgari



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Camp Half-Blood, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 05:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first, he thinks his dad is having a nervous breakdown. Hell, you try being twelve years old when your dad attempts to explain that your mom isn't dead at all, she's just a goddess and had to go back to Olympus. Try taking that with a grain of salt and a smile on your face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fumbling Through the Gray

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that's been giving me grief for the last couple months and I'm sick of looking at it in my tabs list, so I'm posting it because it's getting big enough in my head that its probably going to be a multi-parter. This is eventually going to be Derek/Stiles, but I can guarantee you that other pairings are gonna show up, namely Scott/Allison. Lyrics are from Ships in the Night, by Mat Kearney, mainly because the following lyrics suit this AU perfectly:
> 
> Chasing your dreams since the violent 5th grade  
> Trying to believe in your silent own way  
> Cause we'll be ok... I'm not going away  
> Like you watched at fourteen as it went down the drain
> 
> And pops stayed the same and your moms moved away  
> How many of our parents seem to make it anyway  
> We're just fumbling through the grey  
> Trying find a heart that's not walking away

Stiles has always liked going to camp, even before camp was _camp_. Back when going to camp meant roasting s'mores and learning how to set up a tent rather than learning how to skewer monsters. Hell, one of Stiles' earliest memories is playing in a park with his mother and father—the grass brown and crinkly with oncoming winter, leaves of all colors laying in neatly raked piles that his mother would fling him into with a warm, open laugh. She wasn't Athena to him, not back then, when she would sit next to him on the shiny red fake fire truck and pretend she was driving him around, making whirring noises under her breath.  
   
So Stiles is already pretty partial to freshly cut grass and campfires even before Camp Half-Blood becomes his second home.  
   
When he was nine, his father told him that his mother was gone, and Stiles remembers seeing the grief lurking in his dad's eyes and knowing that his mom was dead. There was never a funeral, which probably should have been his first clue. As it was, he overlooked it, thinking that maybe his mom had donated her body to science or something and they just didn't have a body to bury—and since Dad refused to so much as talk about her, Stiles just assumed that he didn't want to deal with having a memorial.  
  
Stiles doesn't learn what really happened until the night that a bunch of demonic slavering wolf-dogs try to eat him alive and his dad nearly gets his head torn off trying to get him out and _away_. He doesn't find out until they're already an hour onto the highway, crammed into his dad's cruiser with the sirens blaring the whole while. His dad kind of explains it to him as they cross the border into Oregon, Stiles fiddling with the police radio to drown out the wail of the siren. He doesn't understand all the cop jargon, but it makes him feel important—and more to the point, it drowns out the panic that started with a bunch of cujo's bursting through their living room window and only worsened when his dad didn't even question it, just got him out of the house as fast as possible.  
   
At first, he thinks his dad is having a nervous breakdown. Hell, you try being twelve years old when your dad attempts to explain that your mom isn't dead at all, she's just a goddess and had to go back to Olympus. Try taking that with a grain of salt and a smile on your face.  
   
Except, it turns out that his dad isn't off his rocker. About ten minutes into Oregon, a cyclops lumbers into the middle of the road, and it's only a decade's worth of experience on the police force that saves them from flipping down the side of a cliff. After that, he takes his dad a lot more seriously. He takes him seriously enough that when they pull into the Klamath Falls airport and purchase two one-way tickets to New York, Stiles only shakes his head and quietly retreats into the dingy airport bathroom to have a panic attack before their flight arrives.  
   
As if that isn't weird enough, his dad mumbles a brief prayer to Zeus as they're boarding the plane.  
   
The flight to New York goes smoothly though, so he guesses that Zeus had to have been listening.  
   
It's only when they arrive at the camp and Dad tells him that he can't go through the barrier that Stiles balks, face pressed so tightly to his dad's chest that his badge leaves an imprint on his cheek. He stays that way, refusing to move until a creature starts smashing it's way through the forest and his dad physically pushes him through the barrier. His dad gives him one last strained smile, and vanishes into the trees, hopefully away from whatever the hell had been tearing after them.  
   
That first glimpse of the camp sucks—he staggers down the hill, weak and jet-lagged to all hell, and when he finally reaches a fire pit where a bunch of teenagers of all ages are gathered, he manages a smile and a wave before he passes out.  
   
All things considered, it could have gone worse.  
   
.  
   
He wakes up to scratchy sheets and dim lighting, with a face grinning down at him out of the darkness.  
   
"Hi!" Scott McCall says, beaming down at him so brightly that Stiles has a brief thought that he might go blind, all from the brightness of this kid's teeth. "Don't worry," he explains. "I'm keeping everyone else out for now, so if you need to freak out, you should probably do it now."  
   
"Thanks," Stiles mutters vaguely, dazed, before he decides to do just that.  
   
Scott sits through the entire panic attack with him, patting his back and murmuring soothing words that tell Stiles more than anything else that whoever Scott's mother is, she's a completely awesome person. Seriously, awesome times infinity. That's how awesome she is.  
  
When Stiles is done freaking out, sniffling into his palms, Scott offers him a kleenex.  
   
It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship.  
   
.  
   
So yeah, camp wasn't always awesome, but now, Stiles looks forward to it more than anything else. He still has to go home for school, which is way less fun considering that his teacher's hate him since he can't concentrate on anything for more than five seconds without popping a buttload of Adderall. Not to mention the dyslexia. According to Scott, he's got a milder form than most of the campers, but it still sucks. The letters still swim all over the page until Stiles contemplates ripping the paper apart. It sucks that despite being one of the smartest kids in his school, his grades are barely above average.  
   
Camp Half-Blood becomes his home away from home, it's occupants his brothers and sisters. He makes friends with Scott and some of the other kids—develops a rather hopeless crush on the prettiest of the Aphrodite girls and manages to get on the shit list of her kinda-sorta boyfriend.  
   
He spends three days in the Hermes cabin, bunking with Scott and trying to stay as far away as possible from Jackson before his mother claims him. He's sitting at the camp fire with Scott and Danny when it happens, and at first, he doesn't notice the silence. The glow is soft, a muted gray-blue that casts a faintly eerie light around his side of the fire. Later, Scott will tell him that the spear and shield that appeared above his head was a good thing—he'll explain what it means, and Stiles will remember his mother and soft lullabies and the feel of her hand on his brow.  
   
But just then, he's only thinking about how he doesn't want to move out of the Hermes cabin—he doesn't want to move away from Scott to room with a bunch of hoity toity Athena kids who think they're all better than each other. It's only Danny slapping him on the back and telling him that the bed below his is free that stops him from freaking out. With all the time that Danny spends in the Hermes cabin, he'd kind of forgotten that the other boy wasn't actually Scott's brother. And as it turns out, Danny's kinda-sorta his. Which is pretty cool.  
   
.  
   
Camp is... fun. He gets his ass handed to him during capture the flag, but it turns out that it doesn't matter how much he sucks at using a sword or spear or bow and arrow or any pointy thing really because he is the king of strategizing. And once he's got that worked out... well, he certainly isn't last to be picked anymore.  
   
He's scrawny and twelve years old, but the first time that he wins a game for them, Lydia—who generally ignores his very existence—grins at him, throwing her arms around him and pressing a kiss to his cheek. He appreciates it, really—hell, he appreciates it a lot, but he'd be a lot happier if she'd put her spear down beforehand. The cut on his cheek ("First blood!" she tells him smugly, completely unrepentant as she tosses her red hair over her shoulder) is worth the look on Jackson's face though.  
   
At nights he plots with Danny, inventing newer, better weapons and in Danny's case, hacking into other people's bank accounts so they can buy old, musty Greek tomes that probably belong in a museum. Sometimes Scott crawls in the window beside Stiles' bunk bed and chills with them as they attempt to translate ancient Greek, rolling his eyes when the rest of the Athena cabin grouses unhappily about a Hermes kid being in their cabin. He eats all of Stiles' twizzlers and gets mud on Stiles' sheets, but the feeling of companionship is what stops Stiles from sending him away. Scott is Stiles' best friend, even if he's a foot too short for his age and happens to have a pretty bad case of acne. But it's cool, because Stiles isn't exactly a prize himself—he's too tall for his age, gangly, and clumsy as hell; and Scott isn't the only one in the camp with a bad case of acne. Stiles somehow manages to be the most hyperactive kid in a camp full of children with ADHD and he babbles so much that he frequently gets locked out of his own cabin and has to bunk with Scott for the night.  
   
They don't always sing around the campfires, but when they do, it's a mishmash of nineties pop and showtunes; their creaking, adolescent voices generally sending Mr. D and Chiron into a strategic retreat. The older kids always pretend to be annoyed when Stiles starts a night with Kumbaya, but who are they kidding? Stiles can see them singing along when they think he isn't looking.  
   
It's the closest thing that he's ever had to having a real family since his mom up and left them. Since she _died._  
   
He wonders if he'll ever see her again. Wonders if she's too good for lullabies and kissing boo-boos better now that she's back to being a full time _goddess._  
   
He wonders if she ever sung Danny to sleep when he was a kid—if she ever picked him up from a soccer game with an ice-box full of juice and orange slices in the back. He wonders if he was special, but immediately shakes the thought from his mind. If he ever knew his mom, he can't imagine her abandoning any of her kids, not really.  
   
He wonders if she remembers him.  
   
.  
   
He does miss his dad though—the loopholes he has to jump through to talk to him on the phone are ridiculous. He always makes a note to tell Danny to invent cell phones that won't act like a personal monster magnet, but predictably, he forgets about it before he even has his dad on the phone.  
   
Sometimes, on his bad days, he wonders who's there to keep his dad eating right while he's away. He thinks about his dad calling for pizza every night that he's gone—probably eating curly fries, the traitor—and has mild to moderate panic attacks every time.  
   
.  
   
The first time he leaves camp to go back to school, there are tears involved. It only happens because Scott is a big lumpy potato who sobs into Stiles' shirt until Stiles sniffles manfully and tells him that it isn't like they can't visit. Which is when he finds out that Scott lives thirty minutes away from him, and the only reason they haven't met in "the real world" yet is because they'd gone to different middle schools.  
   
After that, there's less tears, and Stiles talks so fast that even he can't keep track of what he's saying. They part ways at the edge of camp, Scott hugging him goodbye and jogging over to where his mom is standing, a few feet away from the small cluster of parents. She's pretty—dark curly hair and a friendly face. When she sees Scott, she grins, holding her arms out and laughing when he bounds into her arms. Scott has her dimples. It hurts a little, to watch them.  
   
He turns away, biting his lip when one of the older, surly kids from the Ares cabin wraps his tiny mom up in his big arms, breaking character and laughing into her hair. The smile looks good on him—less like a child of Ares and more just... a kid, who's happy to see his mom again.  
   
He doesn't know who Derek is yet.  
   
He doesn't know that this tiny woman with the catchy smile will be dead in less than two years.  
   
He lets himself watch Derek sweep her off her feet with a playful grin for a moment before he catches sight of his father just past them, leaning against a big fir and pretending that he isn't uncomfortable. Stiles grins and bounces over, catching him in a rare hug.  
   
.  
   
Eighth grade sucks. Sure, he has Scott over for study sessions three times a week, but now that he's had friends, it's difficult to go back to a place where you're that weird handicapped kid who talks too much. He combats the loneliness by throwing himself into his schoolwork—working past the dyslexia because he's a Stilinski, and Stilinski's have a long history of being stubborn as mules. He scales the ranks and ends up with a 3.8 GPA. He's not quite the best in the class yet, but give it time—he's a son of Athena—Athena, the goddess of wisdom is his _mom_ —he'll totally get there.  
   
By the time fall finally shows itself, it's near the end of November, and it lasts about a week before jumping straight into a mild Californian winter.  
   
The leaves are still sprinkled on the ground when his dad gets a call.  
   
Stiles was pretty unaware of Isaac's existence that summer. He was that one kid in the Hermes cabin that was always too quiet. The one who shied away from others during practice and refused to take part in capture the flag. He wasn't a Hermes kid—that Stiles remembers. He was either one of the unclaimed ones or the son of a minor god—possibly both. He slept across from Scott, his navy blue blankets a far cry from Scott's tie-dyed ones.  
   
From what he can remember from those three days he'd spent in the Hermes cabin, Isaac had a pretty bad case of nightmares, but that wasn't something overly abnormal. Most kids at Camp Half-Blood had them. If you didn't get woken up by one of your cabin-mates screaming, it was a good night.  
   
But now, Stiles knows why Isaac had the nightmares—why he shied away from the rest of the camp.  
   
When his dad comes home from work with a kid shadowing him inside, Stiles isn't all that perturbed. It isn't unusual for his dad to bring home a stray for a good meal and some television. Afterwards, if they're old enough, he'll give them the number of a homeless shelter that gets people help—if they're not old enough, their couch gets occupied for a few days while the adoption agency gets their shit together. So Stiles doesn't really question it until he realizes that he recognizes that curly hair.  
   
"Isaac?" he says incredulously, letting the kitchen chair drop back to all four legs. The pencil clatters on the kitchen table when it falls out of his mouth, and he has to slap a hand down on it so it doesn't roll right over the edge.  
   
Stiles can tell the moment that Isaac recognizes him because he flinches, _hard_ , recoiling back into the kitchen counter like he's been hit. His dad gives Stiles a look, glancing between the two of them like he's not entirely sure what's going on. Stiles clambers to his feet, shooting Isaac a confused look, because he's still pressed into the counter like he's trying to fuse with it—become one with the cabinets and all that.  
   
His dad frowns. "I don't know what's going on here but I—"  
   
Stiles throws his arms up. "Camp, dad! He's from camp. I just... didn't expect him here."  
   
At that, Isaac relaxes. He goes from looking terrified to staring at his sneakers in five seconds flat, shoulders slumping. He shuffles in place a bit, biting his lip before he speaks. "Stiles, right? Sorry, I just—"  
   
Stiles' dad interrupts him with a wave of his hand. "It's okay, son. You'll be okay here."  
   
At this, Isaac flinches again, full-body like the sheriff had thrown something at him.  
   
.  
   
Isaac stays with them for three days, and in that time, they... bond. Sort of. And by bonding Stiles means sitting on the same couch while a Star Wars marathon plays in the background for an awkward hour or two before commiserating about how having a god for a parent sucks ass. Apparently Isaac isn't one of the unclaimed ones, he's the son of a minor god, if you count the twin sister of Ares as _minor_. Which Stiles doesn't, because it's one thing to know that all their parents are either siblings, dating, or both, and another thing entirely when one's mom is the twin sister of the god of war.  
   
"Enyo? Really? I didn't even know she had kids... I mean, most of the texts make it seem like she's way too busy killing dudes to settle down long enough to pop a kid out."  
   
Isaac pops a chip into his mouth, chewing for a moment before answering. He fidgets. "Yeah, well. She usually doesn't. Chiron says that I'm the first in... seventy years?"  
   
On the screen, Leia pulls Luke into a kiss—which hey, incest, that's kind of part of this conversation. Sort of. Hell, the only kid that Stiles is aware of her popping out was Enyalius, and she had that kid with her _twin brother_. So yeah, incest. Stiles schools his face into something that isn't quite so baffled. "Weird. You ever meet her?"  
   
Isaac stares at the screen as the credits roll, which... huh. Wonder how many demi-gods were in the movie? Harrison Ford could totally be Apollo's kid. Or hell, maybe Zeus'. He'd rock that—but, no, there was some kind of pact wasn't there? No kids for the Big Three because their last ones almost destroyed the planet.  
   
When Isaac finally speaks, it makes Stiles jump. "No. I think I remember something from when I was really little—like, just her face or the way her hair looked." He grimaces. "But really, that's it."  
   
Stiles claps him on the back, and feels kind of good about himself when Isaac doesn't jump. "Sucks, man," he says, rubbing Isaac's shoulder a little. He really isn't a bad guy.  
   
So yeah, bonding.  
   
.  
   
Later on that night, when they're both crowded in front of the sink, taking turns spitting as Stiles' dad snores down the hallway Stiles makes the mistake of asking why most of the fingernails are torn off of one of Isaac's hands. Isaac grimaces down at his hand, curling it into a tight fist before letting go. He scoffs. They're both in that sleepy, hazy half-awake state where brain-to-mouth filters don't exist, but even so, once Stiles thinks about the question he asked, he cringes a bit. There has to be some reason why the sheriff took him in, and judging by the night terrors, it's probably not a good reason. So he isn't really expecting an honest answer, and is surprised when Isaac gives him one.  
   
Apparently Isaac's dad locks him in a freezer whenever he misbehaves—which, whatever, Stiles doesn't care that it isn't plugged in, that's just _wrong_ —and throws shit at him when Isaac says something he doesn't like. Isaac tells him about the broken arms and the bruises and how he's terrified that even with the sheriff fighting him, he'll still end up back with his dad.  
   
"He wasn't always bad," Isaac insists in a broken, hollow sounding voice and Stiles closes his eyes, wishing that he had real superpowers instead of just a giant brain. Kids of the Big Three have it lucky—lightning and control of the water and the ability to shift the earth itself. Supposedly every once in a while a Hephaestus kid will come along with the power of fire, and the Demeter kids can make jungles grow in days, but that's it. Stiles has an awesome brain and an eye for strategy, and he likes who he is, but in just that one second, he wishes he could use a sword, because he wants to cut off this guys head.  
   
He shakes his head, pastes a fake smile on his face, and helps Isaac apply peroxide to the raw, red skin at the tips of his fingers.  
   
"It'll be okay," he tells Isaac when they're settled into bed, Isaac on the blow-up mattress next to his bed.  
   
.  
   
Stiles doesn't know what kind of strings his dad pulls, but it is pretty okay. Somehow his dad manages to convince the officials that Isaac couldn't go back to his dad, and then has Chiron come out to 'adopt' Isaac. It's weird seeing Chiron in a wheelchair, mostly because Stiles has _no idea_ where the hell he's hiding the hooves, but after a moment, he ignores the thought, because Isaac's grabbed his hand, gripping it like it's the only thing stopping him from drowning.  
   
So Isaac becomes a year-rounder at Camp Half-Blood, and Stiles gets a promise from dad that Isaac can visit whenever the hell he wants.  
   
.  
   
   
   
The year that Stiles turns thirteen, he officially meets Derek Hale—the grumpy faced seventeen year old from the Ares cabin, because they're sent on a quest together.  
   
It's pretty small time, but all the same, he's not sure that the Oracle got the right guy.  
   
The quest goes smoothly, mostly because Stiles orchestrates the entire thing and lets Derek do the tough parts, like fighting the bad guys. The bad guy in question happens to be a very confused sphinx who they actually just send back on it's way, but it's claws are still off-putting enough that Stiles hides behind Derek's shoulder and only pokes his head out to give the answers to the Sphinx's riddles.  
   
When they get back, there's a small ceremony, because apparently quests are big deals, and Stiles sits with Scott and grins at Jackson, because he can.  
   
Jackson retaliates by finally asking Lydia out, officially.  
   
So that happens.  
   
It's also the year that Derek meets Kate, which is even worse than the Lydia &Jackson thing, because the next year, Derek doesn't come back.


End file.
